Memorial Day Weekend

Thank you to all our veterans who are serving and who died serving our country.  We also pause on this Memorial Day to remember friends and loved ones who have left us.

Late Friday evening Lonn called and we made a quick decision—let’s go camping—and since we have such an assortment of RV’s from which to choose , it was hard to decide between the truck camper and the new to us Foretravel motorhome.  Not knowing what kind of campsite we might find on this holiday weekend we chose to take the truck camper.

And we received quite the education!!!  Larry and Geri—truck campers are tiny!!  And I do mean tiny!!  Ours has what is called a wet bath—and if Michael and I were taller or bigger we would have become wedged in that tiny bathroom!!  When you take a shower everything in the bathroom gets wet—toilet, sink, toilet paper if you leave it out —the entire bathroom is fiberglass and the floor has a drain.  You must be much more polite to each other living in a truck camper—“excuse me, could you step this way so I can step the other way???”  We most definitely will be needing a new mattress—the current one is made of concrete! Oh, and one more thing, you better have your wits about you when navigating the stairs down out of a truck camper—geez!!!

But seriously—it is the perfect rig for traveling to Alaska on the ferry system.  For one thing, when you get too long in length the Alaska Ferry System starts charging by the foot and it ain’t cheap!!  We want to be able to get into USFS campgrounds and to fit in pullouts along the roads.  We have given lots and lots of thought to our rig choice and have decided to go with a truck and truck camper—selling the new to us Foretravel we just purchased—anyone want to buy a really, really cool, totally remodeled 29 foot Foretravel motorhome???

Saturday was Nat’s 92nd birthday and we had a small family party here at the house before we headed over to Red Lodge, MT for our camping trip.  Nat received books (he loves to read), a bottle of excellent scotch (he has one scotch each afternoon at exactly 5pm) and family photos. 

We were off to Red Lodge as was the entire population of Montana I think!!  It’s possible Lonn, Katie and Michael (Katie’s husband is named Michael also) got the last campsite anywhere in the vicinity of Red Lodge!!  We were boondocking—which we prefer and had some fairly close neighbors just over a little hill but they were great neighbors—friendly and controlled their dogs and children.  And we had a fabulous weekend!!  I took a zillion photos so I chose to show you a few in this little movie—you will see our campsite, the scenery around our campsite, our boy scout starting a fire, and our daredevil riding his motorcycle up onto the flatbed of the pickup.

Yesterday we drove up to the top of the Beartooth Pass—it’s tradition in Wyoming and Montana for the Beartooth Pass to be plowed and open for Memorial Day weekend.  The pass elevation is 12,000 feet so this tradition sometimes doesn’t happen.  In the video you will see how deep the snow was along the roads—in some places only the narrow road was plowed and it would have been easy to trade paint jobs with passing cars if not paying close attention!

Enjoy!!

The weather was perfect for Memorial Day weekend—very unusual for Montana—it usually snows!  The temps are unseasonably warm causing the mountain snow to melt and parts of Montana are under a flood watch:

The mighty Yellowstone River at Columbus, MT.

This is the first overlook on the Beartooth Pass out of Red Lodge heading to Cooke City—it’s a beautiful spot and we’ve taken many, many photographs of friends and family at this overlook. We’ve also never been up the Beartooth Pass this early in the year and as you can see, the overlook was closed!!

Sunday evening we drove to Roscoe, MT and had dinner at the Grizzly Bar—delicious!! We love their “Grizzly Delight” dessert—a ball of ice cream, rolled in tiny chocolate chips and drizzled with raspberry sauce!  This morning we drank our coffee around one last campfire, packed up and headed for home—it was a fabulous weekend with family!!